It's weird for me to come back to The Ghost after some of the madness we've been touching on lately. After Gretta and The Telephone Book and all the rest, a middling Euro-Gothic memorable to me chiefly because I enjoyed it as a kid is hardly going to be a good link in our combo chain, to use a fighting game metaphor. Whatever--this is film criticism, and the only rule is that there are no rules. (That and that you must hate every remake without watching it.) The Ghost may be one of the most painfully non-crazy films I happen to like, but I know not everything needs to be the most extravagantly nutty thing on the block. Let's get stuffy.
Dr. John Hichcock has been paralyzed, but he and his friend Dr. Charles Livingstone are trying to use poison to cure that. The idea is that they'll expose him to an almost-lethal dose of curare, and then give him the antidote at the last second, so that, ideally, the shock will bring vitality back to his legs. On the side, Hichcock also indulges in seances and other spiritualist fancies with his medium housemaid Catherine. Most people, including Hichcock's wife Margaret, are opposed to such dangerous extravagances. But she loves him all the same...or so it seems. It's still several years before the good doctor would have the chance to read Lady Chatterley's Lover, but let's just say being the man around the house who can't use the lower half of his body is not a good thing when one is a fictional character. Margaret is a good actress, and not just because she's played by horror empress Barbara Steele; she and Charles are having an affair, and she hates John entirely, wanting only his money. You can imagine what happens next--it's just a matter of a little too much curare, or the cure delivered a little too late. Soon the treacherous couple are free, but in truth their troubles are just beginning. After all, this movie ain't called The Ghost for nuthin'. But what's really going on here?
I think what I like the most about The Ghost is that it's one of the most generic movies I can think of. What? No, I'm normal, I swear. I am captivated by The Ghost because it does the exact minimum an atmospheric Gothic spooker about adultery has to do to be a movie, while still being entertaining. Provided, as a kid, I was very much fascinated with horror that I wasn't scared by. I would try to find what people found creepy in horror stories I thought were mundane so as to better understand what scared people. For the benefit of my writing, of course--like I said, I'm absolutely normal. The Ghost touches on the usual Gothic fears: ghosts, obviously, as well as crypts and untrustworthy house staff. And deception, of course. I seem to remember this movie's twist actually getting me as a kid, though I also remember being pissed about the movie's final stance on paranormal activity. As an adult you will probably guess what's up before the finale, especially since there are a few other movies that have very similar premises.
One of them is 1965's Nightmare Castle, a movie which also tends to garnish the public domain collections that The Ghost has a tendency to appear on (and which also stars Barbara Steele). I only saw that recently, under the best possible conditions: a remastered HD print, in its uncut 100+ minute form. And I fell asleep three times. Maybe it was the absence of the nostalgia hook, but there was also the lurking sense that Castle director Mario Caiano was ripping off Riccardo Freda...especially since Nightmare Castle also rips off Freda's The Horrible Dr. Hichcock! (It's okay, they all rip off Les Diaboliques.) Incidentally, The Ghost is often listed as a sequel to The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, even though the Dr. Hichcock in that movie is named Bernard, not John. I assume that Bernard and John are brothers and probably blood kin of The Awful Dr. Orlof, which, fittingly, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock shared a double bill with back in the '60s. The Horrible Dr. Hichcock is pretty good as well, definitely more of a B-feature, but it features yet another amazing performance from Barbara Steele so it's worth tracking down.
How does this movie hold up as a trash film, then? Well, it's definitely more to the side of commercial products like Horror Safari than the material I usually like to cover, but there are still some classic bad movie moments. The movie opens strangely, in media res at the end of one of Hichcock's seances, as Charles says, "That's enough for tonight." Operatic music swells and the opening credits play as everyone files away. For years I assumed the public domain DVD I had was cut, but nope, the movie's supposed to play like that. I have no idea why they did this, aside from just having no clue on how to start the movie. But surely you could have had a creepy establishing shot of the house or something...?
This movie is also really melodramatic, sometimes beyond the call of duty required of a Gothic horror movie. Hichcock seeming never notices that his supposedly-doting wife wants to kill him, even when she freezes and stares murderously into the distance for several seconds while holding a straight razor up to his throat during a shaving session. People gasp at the movement of curtains or shadows, and someone actually says, "I had to do it. There will be no witnesses." And of course, everything boils down to a hammy cackling exposition dump at the end. I guess if you want to see Dungeon of Harrow made by Europeans, or a Jess Franco movie without even a hint of ass or pubes, this is the way to go. The Ghost is like a hard pair of shoes, and takes a good breaking in, but once you get it to fit it will bring you some good walking.
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